2017 Audi R8 Second Drive Review

(Nailing) The Follow-Up Album: The Second Hit is Always the Hardest

In the music industry, the only achievement more daunting than your first hit record is your second. Think on it a moment: How many times have you asked yourself, "Whatever happened to that new band that had the huge hit a year or two ago?" The industry is rife with examples of bands that hit it big only to slip quietly into the night when the follow-up album failed to live up to the breakout debut. They even have a name for it: the “sophomore slump.”

The problem is less common in the automotive industry, but it still exists. The potential for the sophomore slump to strike is never higher than when building the second generation of an iconic car. Audi's designers and engineers must've been acutely aware of this as they brought the all-new R8 into existence. After all, the original is beautiful and contemporary to this day, and it's had no trouble keeping up with newer competitors. The likelihood that Audi would fail to do the original justice ran higher than usual given the R8's halo status and pop culture presence, but I'm happy to report the company has risen to the challenge.There were plenty of opportunities to go wrong. The biggest potential pitfall was on the outside. The original R8 was a staggeringly pretty car, and I'll be honest: My first impression of the new car hovered around disappointment. As seems to be an emerging trend with Audi's latest styling language, though, it simply doesn't translate well in photographs. All the latest Audis need to be seen in person to really be appreciated, and the new R8 is no exception. The sharper, edgier design works harmoniously in natural light, and controversial elements such as the now-split side blade make more sense when you can walk around and see them from different angles. (Caveat: The stronger the contrasting color on the side blade, the better it all works.)Then there's the matter of how it drives. Audi made continual upgrades to the first-generation R8 that improved both its handling and its comfort, and there's further improvement to be found in the new car. The greatest of these is in the steering, which presented a serious minefield to its engineers. All-wheel drive and electrically assisted power steering combined to rob the old car of nearly any steering feel and left it with an artificial lightness. The new car adds variable-ratio Dynamic Steering, which we roundly criticized in its Lamborghini Huracán twin. Audi, thankfully, had the benefit of a later product launch, which gave its engineers the opportunity to learn from the Huracán's troubles and use the interim months to fine-tune the system.The verdict: bullet dodged. Audi's variable-ratio steering works as promised, lighter effort and a slower ratio at low speed for easy maneuvering in tight spots and heavier effort with a faster ratio at high speeds, all with a linear progression from one end to the other. They even managed to find a small bit of road feel in there, too. No, it doesn't have the steering of an air-cooled 911, but it's a notable improvement over the old car and the Huracán.Contributing to that betterment is a significantly stiffer chassis backed by standard magnetorheological shock absorbers. These, too, drew ire as applied to the Huracán, but here again, Audi gets it right. Given the stiffness of the chassis and the unimpeachable composure of the car, the ride quality is simply remarkable. Here's your big win-win: Audi made the R8 go faster and handle better without diminishing the ride quality or the everyday livability.And handle it does. On the road, the only thing to concern yourself with is the limits of the tires, and if you manage to find those on a public street, well, no one will pity you the consequences. Broken pavement and large bumps don't unsettle it in the least. One particularly nasty hidden mid-corner dip should've resulted in a big oversteer, but all the R8 gave was a slight twitch of the rear end. Then it was back to all grip, all the time.This bears out on the track, as well. Oversteer can be provoked early to mid-corner with a sharp lift off the throttle or late-corner with a stab of the throttle, but in either case you get only maybe 20 degrees or so of rotation before it hooks up, and a little counter-steer brings it right back in line. It's still relatively easy to provoke understeer, too, just by getting too greedy with the throttle too early in a corner, but you don't get nearly as much as with the old car.The revamped drivetrain helps enable this neutrality and composure. An electronically controlled clutch replaces the old viscous-coupling center differential, allowing much finer control of fore/aft power distribution and the ability to send all the power forward. Working with a mechanical limited-slip differential at the rear and a small amount of brake-based torque vectoring, the system always seems to know exactly where to put the power in the appropriate quantity.And what power it is. The standard 5.2-liter V-10 is more powerful while still delivering the same linear powerband we love and expect of a naturally aspirated engine. No, there's never a big kick in the back from turbos coming on, but in return you get utterly predictable power delivery at any engine speed.Deftly handling that power is an improved seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox that is clearly gunning for best-of-the-breed. Push hard, and both upshifts and downshifts are as seamless as they are instantaneous. Slightly balky shifts can be provoked at low speeds if you happen to come quickly on or off the throttle just as it's changing gear, but they're merely a nitpicky annoyance. Similarly, the transmission, even in Dynamic mode, goes quickly for the higher gear rather than the performance gear and can hunt around a lot at times. It does it all so quickly and so smoothly, though, that it's barely an issue. Otherwise, it's nearly telepathic on both road and track, and if it happens to be a gear high, a slight squeeze of the throttle will correct it. Truthfully, you don't ever need to manually shift it, but it is fun. I’d have to drive it back-to-back with Porsche’s benchmark PDK transmission, but I’d bet this one’s pretty close to par.And that's all just the standard car. There's also the V-10 Plus, which really gets you cooking with gas. An extra 70 hp, fixed-ratio dampers (not available during our test; magnetic shocks are optional), performance transmission gearing (no overdrive gears), and a special Performance driving mode (it allows more slip angle, reduces computer intervention, and sets the transmission to maximum performance) conspire to make the R8 even more potent on street or track. Again, though, you lose almost nothing while gaining substantially in performance.Also noteworthy on the option list: stop-anything carbon-ceramic brakes and thin-shell performance seats. The former will always let you brake later than you dare, and the latter will keep you firmly in place without being uncomfortable in the least.Likewise worth discussing is the new Virtual Cockpit, Audi's name for moving your information and entertainment screen into the gauge cluster. It's an impressive piece of technology to say the least. It can display everything from entertainment to vehicle status to Google Earth-enhanced navigation, the latter effectively giving you visual rally pace notes an easy glance away (to a point—at highest speeds, there's no time to look down). The downside is the learning curve, as it's controlled both by Audi's MMI rotary controller next to the shifter and by the steering wheel buttons. That, and it's a bit difficult for your passenger to change the radio station or input an address for you with the screen so far away. In fact, all of the controls in the new cockpit take a little getting used to. Not enough to make you crazy, but just a little different than most cars.Otherwise, there's little about the new R8 to disparage. Slightly unusual controls, a mild fussiness from the transmission, and the nearly cliché lack of steering feel aren't particularly damning complaints. More important, they're outweighed by the overall improvements to the car. This, in essence, is what makes the new R8 truly great. Audi's given us more and better everything and taken virtually nothing in return. It's hard to ask for more than that.